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Saturday, August 19, 2006

I was thinking that it's really unfair that I can enjoy ice-cream that I like only when I am in Italy. So last Sunday Lucas and I went and bought.. an ice-cream machine!!!It was a great deal - $25 at Target. It's huge, as all things in the US.I tried it already to make vanilla ice-cream. I decided I will experiment many variations, since there are apparently thousands of different recipes, with cream/milk/sugar ratio compeletely different, even for the same flavor.So, this is my first trial.. how exciting!!

Gelato alla vaniglia guarnito con mirtilliVanilla ice-cream decorated with blueberries1 liter milk (~1 quart)180 g sugar (a bit less than 1 cup)200 ml heavy whipping cream (~ 1 cup)8 egg yolksvanilla extract or piecesWith a blender, mix the sugar and the yolks until they're fluffy. Warm up the milk with the vanilla in it, add the yolk/sugar mixture to it and keep warming up until the mixture lightly sticks to a spoon dipped in (a total of ~5 minutes since you start warming). The milk should not boil.Remove from the stove (take out the pieces of vanilla, if you were using them) and add the cream. Let the mixture cool down and pour it in the ice-cream maker. In my case, it was done in about 40 minutes.Put in the freezer for a few hours before serving.Garnish with the blueberries when served.

This mixture didn't even fill half of my huge ice-cream maker but it seems to be enough for 8-10 people..

The flavor was absolutely delicious. The consistency needs to be slightly improved, since it was a bit icey, and if you left it outside it didn't become soft but it tended to become liquid. But it felt really light and refreshing. This recipe has about half the sugar of the original one, and is one of the lowest heavy cream/milk ratio that I found. I may need to stir it longer or to add more cream or sugar to have the right consistency. We'll see next time!